Bed Sheets in June

The wind hits the blinds but we hate the day and fight for the darkness and the giggles with the bed sheets cradling our bodies. Your head rests on my shoulder and I tickle your back. You ask about a book on my bookshelf and I tell you it’s one of my favorites. A glass of water hangs on the window sill and we take turns drinking it in with the morning heat subdued and mellow.

I say you are beautiful.

I mean it.

Honestly.

Your hand on my chest and my heart beating real fast and you look at me and smile like you would settle for nothing less. Somewhere outside our bubble the time clicks our departure closer. I comment about it but you put your fingers to my mouth to hush my concern.

A breeze flirts its way into the room, and sunlight nudges the blinds away to mingle with your face, and your dark hair, and those lips that have long been rubbed kissing clean of their gloss. And I remember you young, remember me young, and our high school, and the stadium where I first met your eyes, and the way you folded the notes you wrote to me, and that long drive to your home and your father distrusting me while failing to realize that I was a better boy for you than any other, and your mother cooking in the kitchen and your sister at the computer in smartness and everything about us written in thought journals and memory books, trapped in a limitless locket of love.

But the time comes for you to leave, for another continent, for another life, that plane lifting you off the ground and into the air while I watch beneath, shading my eyes from the sun as the plane peaks into the clouds and out of sight, whisking away any possibility of spending another morning with you in June bed sheets.